A bit about beans.

From Thoreau's chapter "The Bean-Field":

The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also. (108)

This is hard. But it is also, perhaps, his answer to the question he asks early in that chapter:

What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day's work. (101)

It is a good reminder of the importance of work without expectation, a reminder of the importance of faith, a reminder of the importance of hope, of anticipation, of morning.

Earlier, in "Economy," Henry tells us:

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well nigh incurable form of disease. (6)

And it's easy to agree--contemporary medicine would agree that "incessant anxiety" is indeed a cause of disease, if not disease itself. But to give up the claim to control our own fates? To relinquish the produce of our work? To lay not only our first fruits, but also our last, on the altar?

It is a curious thing how much we think we control. Surely, the work we do is important. Surely, Henry's beans would not have grown in that field had he not planted them, and hoed them, and cherished them, had he not tended to them, weeded them. Surely, the work we do has something to do with the results we receive. But how much? Henry points to the role of the sun, who sees no difference between his field and other areas of the earth, and the rain, which waters the land without regard for whether it is cultivated or not.

We live in a culture which encourages us to see the products of our labor as our possessions, possessions to which we lay exclusive title. (This is not unique to us, of course.) And so we believe we can somehow control our fates, that we are the masters of our own destinies. But, as it's asked in Matthew 6:

Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

Again: this is hard. We want to do well, we recognize the need to produce, the desire to achieve, the importance of work. But Henry does not suggest that we abandon our work, but tells us that we should "finish [our] labor with every day," recognizing that the part we play in things, although of some importance, is (from a larger perspective) comparatively small. ("We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us!" [6]) And the results of our work, whatever they are, are not ours alone, are not even--truly speaking--ours at all.

What's more, of course, is to put this in terms not of beans, but of self-cultivation, of the finer fruits Henry would have us pursue.